Traditionally, a cannoli shell should be held in a hand with the central hollow cavity horizontally oriented and the prepared cannoli cream is spooned into the cavity or forced into the cavity with a conventional pastry bag. When the pastry bag is empty it needs to be refilled, and refilling an already used bag is cumbersome. The capacity of cannoli cream that a pastry bag can hold is limited. This all means that the activity of refilling the pastry bag must be repeated often, which makes it both a time consuming and messy way to fill cannoli shells. When not in use, the pastry bag is promptly stored in a refrigerator to preserve the cannoli cream inside it. It can be seen that this traditional scheme for filling cannoli shells is not very efficient.
Storing food using refrigeration is a well established practice, and such storage has been combined with dispensing of food. Examples of dispensing of refrigerated food are found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,299,025 to Watanabe et al., U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,553,756 and 5,494,194, both to Topper et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,923,006 to Walton et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 3,213,903 to Armstrong.
One problem with the dispensing structures of the arrangements described above is that they are not well adapted for use in filling cannoli shells with cannoli cream. The fixed, vertically oriented dispensers of these systems are not suitable for filling cannoli shells.
It is also noted that the storage and dispensing arrangements described above are bulky and do not lend themselves to being moved around easily in a kitchen or pastry shop.
What is needed is a system that keeps viscous, semi-solid food material cool, is capable of dispensing the food material into horizontally oriented cavities, and which is portable.